Yes, people grew with subconscious feeling that cautionary tales of the old science fiction are the way to real power. A bit similar to ex-Soviet people being subconsciously attracted to German Nazi symbolism.

Evil is usually shown as strong, and strength is what we need IRL, to make a successful business, to fix a decaying nation, to give a depressed society something to be enthusiastic about.

They think there should be some future, looking, eh, futuristic.

The most futuristic things are those that look and function in a practical way and change people's lives for the better. We've had the brilliance and entertainment of 90s and early 00s computing, then it became worse. So they have to promise something.

BTW, in architecture brutalism is coming back into fashion (in discussions and not in the real construction), perhaps we will see a similar movement for computing at some point - for simplification and egalitarianism.